


True Faces and Masks

by devilinthedetails



Series: Free Spirit [5]
Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Arranged Marriages, F/M, Family, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:53:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25773910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: If she is to marry the Crown Prince of Maren, Lianne will need her friends beside her.
Relationships: Alan of Pirate's Swoop/Lianne II of Conté, Lianne II of Conte/OC
Series: Free Spirit [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1864777
Kudos: 7





	True Faces and Masks

True Faces and Masks

It was the day after the week-long Midwinter holiday had ended, but Lianne was in the summer of her life and youth. That was why when she was sitting around a roaring fire in a private parlor with her parents, her father asked her, “What do you think of Prince Rurik, my dear?” 

“He seems nice enough, Papa.” Lianne wriggled the silver bracelet that suddenly felt too tight about her wrist. “He’s been nothing less than courteous and gallant to me since he came to Corus.” 

Prince Rurik, heir to Maren’s golden throne, had been their royal guest of honor that Midwinter. He’d been particularly attentive to Lianne throughout his state visit. They’d skated together on the frozen Olorun, wind whipping at their cheeks until they were red holly berries. They’d gone riding in the forest, racing their horses against each over the mounds of snow. They’d danced at the holiday balls and strolled through the gardens, admiring the ice statues and evergreen bushes. 

Yesterday he’d even escorted her, his arm tucked around hers, down to the city. Together they’d walked the cobblestone streets of the best merchant districts in Corus, and she’d shown him all her favorite shops. At each of these favored shops, he’d bowed to her as he’d bought her small, expensive trinkets. Trinkets to remember him by, he’d said whenever he’d made such a purchase on her behalf, his shining brown-and-green speckled eyes reminding her of Alan. 

It was the fact that she saw the eyes of Alan, whom she loved above all others, that had made her smile so warmly at Prince Rurik, she was certain.  
Prince Rurik, not privy to her thoughts, had complimented her eyes as they returned from the city to the palace. 

“You’ve beautiful eyes,” Prince Rurik had remarked, staring so deeply into them that Lianne had felt her face burn like blazebalm ignited by a mage. “They’re warm and soft as honey.” 

“I have boring eyes.” Lianne had shook her head. She’d never had the beauty of her eyes extolled before. Her eyes weren’t the sapphire blue of poetic cliche as her father’s, Roald’s, and Kally’s were. Nor were they the dynamic hazel Liam had inherited from their mother, the sharply cutting emerald of Jasson’s, or the drowning blue-green oceans of Vania’s. They were just a dull brown. “Dirt brown eyes.” 

“Dirt is nourishing. All the plants that sustain us grow in the dirt. The dirt is mother to us all.” Prince Rurik had smiled at her then, and Lianne had reflected that of course a prince of Maren, bread basket of the Eastern Lands, would offer such an observation. “Your eyes are nourishing too.” 

In the parlor with her parents, Lianne flushed with the memory of Prince Rurik praising her often ignored eyes—eyes that had forever been a great source of insecurity for her as they made her feel plain in comparison to her beautiful sisters and mother. 

“I’m glad you like him.” Papa’s words dragged Lianne back to the present, away from her memories of Prince Rurik. “Your mother and I were thinking of arranging a marriage contract between you and Prince Rurik.” 

“Was Prince Rurik aware of that when he came to Corus?” Lianne’s blood, which had been flowing so hot in her veins, went stone cold. She chastised herself for a trice-cursed fool because that could have been the only reason he had come to Corus and been so solicitous with her. She’d just been too blind to see it. 

“Yes.” Papa nodded, his face cast into flickering shadow by the flames in the fireplace. “Your mother and I told him before he came to Corus that he’d have to win your heart enough to earn your consent to the betrothal.” 

Win her heart. As if it were a feat of arms to be performed to thunderous applause at a tournament. Lianne’s heart pounded like horse hooves in her chest. Prince Rurik could never win her heart because she’d given it to Alan, a childhood friend who had become much more than that over the years, long ago. 

Yet, marriage for royalty wasn’t a matter of the heart. It was about politics, pure and simple. It was about duty, not love. 

Her mother had explained that to her when she’d had her first painful monthly bleeding that marked her entrance into womanhood. She’d asked Mama if that meant Mama hadn’t loved Papa when they were married. As a child, Lianne had thought her parents had a perfect fairy tale, happily-ever-after romance, and perhaps being a woman meant noticing the fractures and fault lines in their relationship. 

Mama had tapped her lips thoughtfully before answering that she hadn’t loved Papa when she married him but she’d believed that she could come to love him and change the world with him, and she had. She had said her love for Papa had grown gradually over the years of their marriage, and that had made their love stronger than if it had been created in a rushed instant. 

Lianne’s love for Alan had also been created and made more enduring over the years she had matured from budding child to blossoming woman. She didn’t think she could ever grow to love Prince Rurik, however. She didn’t think she could love two people in that intimate, soul-touching way. Only Alan could shape her heart and mold her life in that way as if she were malleable clay in his palms. 

“Prince Rurik might only have been putting on a charming performance to win my heart.” Lianne scowled. “I don’t really know anything about him then. All the time we spent together, he could’ve been acting.” 

“You could give the man the benefit of the doubt.” Mama’s tone was wry. “You could assume that he was showing you his true face rather than wearing a mask to deceive you.” 

Deceit. Wearing a mask instead of a true face. Had Lianne been wearing a mask every moment she had been with Prince Rurik? Would she be deceiving him if she married him when her heart had been given to Alan long ago? Yet wouldn’t she be failing in her duty to Tortall if she refused to marry Prince Rurik because she had fallen in love with Alan? 

It was too complicated a knot tor Lianne to untangle. All she knew was that she couldn’t follow her heart—she couldn’t marry Alan—so she might as well wed the Crown Prince of Maren as her parents wished. 

“I will marry Prince Rurik on one condition.” Lianne folded her hands in her lap, hoping to hide their shaking from the keen gazes of her parents. “He might not have won my heart, but he has earned my consent.” 

“What’s your condition, Lianne?” Papa’s fingers steepled as his expression settled into what Lianne mentally termed as his negotiation face. 

“I don’t want to be alone in Maren.” Lianne’s eyelashes fluttered like delicate butterfly wings, adopting a front of feminine fragility that could sometimes be more effective than any strident argument. “I’ll need friends in Maren to support and comfort me.” 

“Of course you won’t be alone in Maren.” Papa sounded shocked that she would imagine such a solitary fate for herself. “One of the Minchi daughters married into the the high ranks of Maren nobility last year. She’ll be a companion and a comfort to you.” 

“The Minchi daughter’s name is Senga.” Mama shot Papa a reproachgul glance for his memory like a leaking vessel and squeezed Lianne’s fingers in a reassuring clasp. “You’ll also be able to bring all your ladies to Maren. You’ll be happy in Maren with friends at your side.” 

That was how her mother, a refugee of war-torn Sarain, had first arrived in Tortall: with nobody but her friends beside her, bravely believing that she could survive anything a strange country could hurl at her as long as she had her trusted friends about her. 

Lianne wanted more than female company beside her when she went to Maren, she couldn’t offer such a scandalous statement outright. She’d have to try to be more circumspect in her phrasing. 

“I want more than my ladies around me in Maren.” Lianne’s chin lifted. “I want my childhood friend Sir Alan of Pirate’s Swoop to be my companion and protector, my knight-in-shining armor, in Maren.” 

“I don’t have a problem with that.” Papa stroked his beard. “As long as Alan agrees to it, he may accompany you to Maren. I’ll see that it’s negotiated into your marriage contract.” 

“Alan will agree, Papa.” Her spirit leaping inside her, Lianne stood to kiss her father’s cheek. “Since we were little, he’s never been able to refuse me anything.” 

“You’ll be happy in Maren, I promise.” Papa hugged her, and she tried to make herself believe that was something her father had the power to guarantee instead of merely hope for her as she did for herself.


End file.
